Richard Green is a professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
This blog will feature commentary on the current state of housing, commercial real estate, mortgage finance, and urban development around the world. It may also at times have ruminations about graduate business education.

Monday, May 07, 2018

Ten things data have taught me about the world.

(1) Tax cuts do not magically create growth; (2) Vaccines are among the best things we have ever invented; (3) raising the minimum wage to a point improves living standards for low wage workers (and that point may be somewhere between $11 and $15 per hour), beyond that point, it lowers living standards for low wage workers; (4) GMOs are fine; (5) the benefits of the Clean Air Act swamp the costs by an order of magnitude or more; (6) the mortgage interest deduction has a vanishingly small impact on the homeownership rate; (7) trade has raised living standards for hundreds of millions around the world; (8) trade has reduced living standards for low skilled workers in the US; (9) rent control reduces the stock of rental housing; (10) even though I like Lebron better than Jordan, MJ was the better player.